Lactantius saw so little force in the miracles of Christ, exclusive of

the prophecies, that he does not hesitate to affirm their utter
inability to support the Christian religion by themselves. [Lactan. Div.
Inst. L. v. c. 3.]

Celsus, observing upon the words of Jesus, that "false prophets and
false Christs shall arise, and show grant signs and wonders," sneeringly
observes, "A fine thing truly! that miracles done by him should prove
him to be a God, and when done by others should demonstrate them to be
false prophets and impostors."

Tertullian, on the words of Jesus, here referred to by Celsus, says as
follows;

"Christ, foretelling that many imposters should come and perform many
wonders, shews, that our faith cannot without great temerity be founded
on miracles, since they were so early wrought, by false Christians
themselves." [Tertul. in Marc. L. ii. c. 3.]

Indeed, miracles in the two first centuries were allowed very little
weight in proving doctrines. Since the Christians did not deny, that the
heathens performed miracles in behalf of their gods, and that the
heretics performed them as will as the orthodox. This accounts for the
perfect indifference of the heathens to the miracles said to have been
performed by the founders of Christianity. Hierocles speaks with great
contempt of what he calls "the little tricks of Jesus," And Origen, in
his reply to Celsus, waves the consideration of the Christian miracles:
"for (says he) the very mention of these things sets you heathens upon
the. broad grin." Indeed, that they laughed very heartily at what in
the eighteenth century is read with a grave face, is evident from the
few fragments of their works written against Christianity which has
escaped the burning zeal of the fathers, and the Christian emperors; who
piously sought for, and burned up, these mischievous volumes to prevent
their doing mischief to posterity. This conduct of theirs is very
suspicious. Why burn writing they could so triumphantly refute, if they
were refutable? They should have remembered the just reflection of
Arnobius, their own apologist, against the heathens, who were for
abolishing at once such writings as promoted Christianity.--"Intercipere
scripta et publicatam velle submergere lectionem, non est Deos
defendere, sed veritatis testificationem timere."[Arnob. contra
Gentes. Liber ni.]--E.


* Before going into the consideration of the following prophecies, the
author would warn the reader to bear in mind, that whether these
prophecies ever will be fulfilled, is a question of no import in the
world to the question under consideration, which is--whether they have
been fulfilled eighteen hundred years ago, in the person of Jesus
Christ, who is asserted by Christians to be the person foretold in these
prophecies, and to have fulfilled their predictions. This question can
be easily decided, and only, we think, by appealing to past history, and
to the scenes passing around us, and comparing them with these
predictions.--E.


* The word in the original being Vayikra, in the Kal or Active form of
the verb, and not Vayikare the Niphal or Passive form.--D.


# reprove or argue.--D.


* Or, in righteousness.--D.


# Mr. English very properly takes notice of the disjunctive accent
(Pasek) occurring here in the text.--D.


# For a more correct enumeration of the thirteen cabalistic rules of
exposition, the English reader is referred to vol. 1, page 209, of the
"Conciliator" of B. Menasseh ben Israel, translated by E, H. Lindo,
Esqr.--D.


# Mr. E. was, doubtless, aware that this is an exposition given by
Jewish Commentators.--D.

# There exists an English translation of this work by Abraham de Sola.
--D.


* The person here spoken of by Isaiah is said to make his grave with the
wicked, and be with the rich in his death. Whereas Jesus did exactly the
contrary. He was with the wicked (i. e., the two thieves) in his death,
and with the rich (i.e., Joseph of Arimathea) in his grave, or tomb. In
the original, the words may be translated that "he shall avenge, or
recompence upon the wicked his grave, and his death upon the rich." Thus
does the Targum and the Arabic version interpret the place, and Ezekiel
ix. 10, uses the verb in the verse in Isaiah under consideration
translated (in The English version)--"He made," &c--in the same sense,
given to this place in Isaiah, by the Targum, and the Arabic, as said
above. See the place in Ezekiel, where it is translated--"I will
recompence their way upon their head." See also Deut. xxi. 8, in the
original. The Syriac has it--"The wicked contributed to his burial, and
the rich to his death." The Arabic--"I will punish the wicked for his
burial, and the rich for his death." The Targum--"He shall send the
wicked into hell, and the rich who put him to a cruel death."--E.

# Or, shall destroy.--D.

* The remainder of this chapter is taken from Levi and Wagenseil.--E.

* The reader is requested to consider the reasoning in the last
paragraph. The prophecy in the second chapter of Daniel, is commonly
supposed to relate to the four Great Empires, the Babylonian, Persian,
Grecian and Roman. This last, it is (according to this interpretation,)
foretold, should be divided into many kingdoms, and that 'in the latter
days of these kingdoms,' (which are now subsisting) God would set up a
kingdom which would never be destroyed,--that of the Messiah. Of course,
according to this interpretation, the kingdom of the Messiah was not to
be not only sustain after the destruction of the Roman Empire, but not
till the latter days of the kingdoms which grew up out of its ruins;
whereas, Jesus was born in the time of Augustus, i. e., precisely when
the Roman Empire itself was in the highest of its splendour and vigour.
This is a remarkable, and very striking, repugnance, to the claims of
the New Testament, and, if substantiated, must overset them entirely.--E.

* The sum of our argument may be expressed thus. God is represented in
the prophecies of the Old Testament as designing to send into the world
an eminent deliverer, descended from David, the peace and prosperity of
whose reign should far exceed all that went before him, in whom all the
glorious things foretold by the prophets should receive their entire
completion; and who should be distinguished by the character of the
Messiah or Christ. This is an article of faith common to Christians and
Jews. But that Jesus of Nazareth should be esteemed this Messiah, and
that Christians can support that opinion, by alledging the prophecies of
the Hebrew scriptures as belonging to, and fulfilled in, him, is what we
can by no means allow, and that especially on account of these
inconsistencies.

1. Because, these prophecies, acknowledged on both sides to point out
the Messiah, could not otherwise answer the end of inspiring them than
by an accomplishment so plain and sensible as might sufficiently
distinguish the person meant by them to be that Messiah. But no such
accomplishment, we contend, can possibly be discerned in Jesus, and,
consequently, he cannot be the person meant by them.

2. Because, several predictions which Christians apply to Jesus, are
wrested to a meaning which quite destroys the historical sense of
scripture, and breaks the connexion of the passages from whence they are
taken. Thus many shreds and loose sentences are culled out for this
purpose, which do not appear to have any relation to Jesus, or to the
Messiah either; but to have received their proper and intended
completion in some other person, whom the prophet, as is manifest, had
then only in view.

3. Because, in their forced applications of the prophecies, Christians,
finding themselves hard pressed by the simple and natural construction,
forsake the literal, and take shelter in spiritual and mystical senses;
fly to hyperboles and strained metaphors, and thus expound the true
meaning and importance of the prophecies quite away; the intent whereof
being to instruct men in so necessary a point of faith as that relating
to the Messiah, it is reasonable to think they would be delivered in the
most perspicuous and intelligible terms. Since ambiguous expressions
(capable of such strange meanings as they pretend,) would be too
slippery a foundation to build such a point of faith upon; would be of
no use, or worse than none; would be unable to teach the clear truth,
and apt to ensnare men into dangerous errors, by leaving too great a
latitude for fanciful interpretations, and introducing darkness and
confusion, and contradiction inexplicable.

4. Because, admitting (as indeed it never was, or can be denied) that
many passages of scripture, and of prophetical scripture especially,
must be figuratively taken; yet, we must always put a wide difference
between a sense not just as the words in their first signification
import, and a sense directly the contrary of what they import. And yet
we complain that this latter is the sense which Christians labour to
obtrude upon the gainsayers. We say, that a kingdom of this world, and
not of this world; contempt and adoration; poverty and magnificence;
persecution and peace; sufferings and triumph; a cross and a throne;
the scandalous death of a private man upon a gibbet, and the everlasting
dominion of a universal monarch, must be reconciled, and mean the self
same thing, before the prophecies appealed to, can do their cause any
service. Granting, then, the goodness of God (according to them,) to
have been better than his word, by giving spiritual blessings, instead
of temporal; yet, what will become of the truth of God, if He act
contrary to his word, even when it would be for our advantage, if He
misleads people by expressions, which, if they mean any thing at all,
must mean what the Jews understand by them?

In short, it seems to me, that if Providence has, in truth, any concern
with the predictions of the Old Testament, it could not have taken more
effectual care to justify the unbelief and obstinacy of the Jews, than
by ordering matters so, that the life and death of Jesus should be so
exactly, and so entirely, the very reverse of all those ideas under
which their prophets had constantly described, and the Hebrew nation as
constantly expected of their Messiah, and his coming; and to suppose
that the Supreme Being meant to describe and point out such a person as
Jesus by such descriptions of the Messiah as are contained in the Old
Testament, is certainly substantially to accuse him of the moat
unjustifiable prevarication, and mockery of his creatures.

In order that the subject we are examining, and the arguments we make
use of, may be clearly understood by the reader, he is requested to bear
in mind, that the author reasons all along upon the supposed Divine
authority of the Old Testament; which is admitted by both Jews and
Christians. Whether the supernatural claims of the Old Testament be
just, or not, is of no consequence in the world to the controversy we
are considering. For the dispute of the Jew with the Christian is one
thing, and his dispute with the sceptic is another, totally different.
For whether such a personage as the Messiah is described to be, has
appeared eighteen hundred years ago, is quite a different thing from the
question, whether such a personage will appear at all. The Christian
says, that he has appeared in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This the
Jew denies, but looks forward to the future fulfilment of the promises
of his Bible, while the Sceptic denies that the Messiah has come, or
ever will.

But the subject at present under consideration is the dispute of the Jew
with the Christian, who acknowledges the Old Testament to be a
Revelation, upon which a new Revelation, that of the New Testament, is
founded and erected. To him the Jew argues, that if the Old Testament be
a Divine Revelation, then the New Testament cannot be a Revelation,
because it contradicts, and is repugnant to, the Old Testament, the more
ancient, and acknowledged Revelation. Now God cannot be the author of
two Revelations, one of which is repugnant to the other. One of them is
certainly false. And if the Christian, conscious of the difficulty of
reconciling the New, with the Old, Testament, attempts to support the
New, at the expense of the Old, Testament, upon which the former is, and
was, built by the founders of Christianity; then the Jew would tell
him, that he acts as absurdly as would the man who should expect to make
his house the firmer, by undermining, and weakening its foundation.

So that whether the Christian affirms, or denies, he is ruined either
way. For he is reduced to this fatal dilemma. If the Old Testament
contains a Revelation from God, then the New Testament is not from God,
for God cannot contradict himself: and it can be proved abundantly, that
the New Testament is contradictory, and repugnant to the Old and to
itself too. If, on the other hand, the Old Testament contains no
Revelation from God, then the New Testament must go down at any rate
because it asserts that the Old Testament does contain a Revelation from
God, and builds upon it, as a foundation.--E.

* There was nothing which gave the author, in writing this Book, so much
uneasiness, at the apprehension of being supposed to entertain
disrespectful sentiments of the Founder of the Christian Religion. I
would most earnestly entreat the reader to believe my solemn assurances,
that by nothing that I have said, or shall be under the necessity of
saying, do I think, or mean to intimate the slightest disparagement to
the moral character of one, whose purity of morals, and good intentions,
deserve any thing else but reproach. That he was an enthusiast, I do not
doubt, that he was a wilful impostor I never will believe. And I protest
before God, that from the apprehensions above-mentioned alone, I would
have confined the contents of this volume to myself, did I not feel
compelled to justify myself for having quitted a profession: and did I
not, above all, think it my duty, to make a well meant attempt, which I
hope will be seconded, to vindicate the unbelief of an unfortunate
nation, who, on that account, have for almost eighteen hundred years,
been made the victim of rancorous prejudice, the most infernal
cruelties, and the most atrocious wickedness. If the Christian religion
be, in truth, not well founded, surely it is the duty of every honest
and every humane, man, to endeavour to dispel an illusion, which
certainly has been, notwithstanding any thing that can be said to the
contrary, the bona fide, and real cause of unspeakable misery, and of
repeated, and remorseless plunderings, and massacres, to an unhappy
people; the journal of whose sufferings, on account of it, forms the
blackest page in the history of the human race, and the most detestable
one in the history of human superstition.--E.

* Jerome, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, says, that
"The Church of Christ was not gathered from the Academy, or the Lyceum,
but from the lowest of the people." [Vili Plebecula.] And Coecilius, in
Minutius Felix, says, that the Christian assemblies were made up "de
ultima faece collectis, imperitioribus, et mulieribus credulis sexus
suae facilitate labentibus," i. e. "that they consisted of the lowest
of the mob, simple and unlearned, men, and credulous women."

The president of a province is introduced, by Prudentius as thus
addressing a martyr:--"Tu qui Doctor, ait, seris novellum Commenti
genus, ut Leves Puellae, Lucos destituunt, Jovem relinquant; Damnes, si
sapias, ANILE DOGMA."

The Christian Fathers confess, and glory in it, that the greater part of
their congregations consisted of women and children, slaves, beggars,
and vagabonds.

The Jewish Christians were, as appears evidently from the New Testament,
exceedingly poor, and therefore there is frequent mention made of
contributions for "the poor Saints at Jerusalem." From thence it was
that the Jewish Christians got the name of Ebionites, i. e. Poor. The
Jewish Christian Church consisted of the dregs of the Jewish people,
simple and ignorant men, Samaritans, &c. No person in Judea of eminence,
or learning, appears to have joined the sect of the Nazarenes, except
Paul; after the destruction of Jerusalem they gradually dwindled in
number, and became extinct.--E.

* I will here lay before the reader the arguments advanced by the
Mahometans in behalf of the miracles of their prophet, extracted from
the learned Reland's account of Mehometanism. They say that--"the
miracles of Mahomet and his followers have been recorded in innumerable
volumes of the most famous, learned, pious, and subtle Doctors of the
Mahometan Faith, who let nothing pass without the strictest and severest
examination, and whose tradition, therefore, is unexceptionable among
them; that they were known throughout all the regions of Arabia, and
transmitted by common and universal tradition from father to son, from
generation to generation. That the books of Interpreters and
Commentators on the Koran, the books of Historians, especially such as
give an account of Mahomet's life and actions, the books of annalists
and lawyers, the books of mathematicians and philosophers, and, last of
all, the books of both Jews and Christians concerning Mahomet, are full
of his miracles. That if the authority of so many great and wise doctors
be denied, then, for their part, they cannot see but that a universal
scepticism as to all other accounts of miracles must obtain among people
of all persuasions. For authority being the only proof of facts done out
of our time, or out of our sight, if that be denied, there is no way to
come to the certainty of any such, without immediate inspiration; and
all accounts of matters recorded in history, must be doubtful and
precarious."

"And these witnesses would not have dared to assert these miracles
unless they were true; for such as forged any miracles for his, which he
really did not, lay under a hearty curse from the prophet. For it was a
received tradition among the faithful, that Mahomet denounced hell and
damnation to all those who should tell any lies of him. So that none who
believed in Mahomet, durst attribute miracles to him which he was not
concerned in; and those who believed not in him, would certainly never
have given him the honour of working any, unless he had done so."
Christian reader, thou seest how much can be said, and how many
respectable witnesses and authorities can be adduced to prove that
Mahomet wrought miracles. Canst thou adduce more, or better, authorities
in behalf of the miracles of the New Testament? Art thou not rather
satisfied how fallacious the evidence of testimony is in all such cases?

This is not all that the Mahometan might urge in behalf of his prophet,
for he might tell the Christian, boasting that Jesus and his Apostles
converted the Roman world from idolatry, that they overthrew one system
of idolatry, only to build up another, since the worship of Jesus, the
Virgin Mary, and the Saints, and their images was established in a few
hundred years after Jesus, and continues to this day; an idolatry as
rank, and much more inexcusable than the worship of the ancient Greeks
and Romans. Whereas, Mahomet cut "up root and branch, both Christian and
Pagan idolatry, and proclaimed one only God as the object of adoration;
and if the Christian should urge the rapid propagation of Christianity,
the Mahometan might reply, that Mahomet was a poor camel-driver, but
that Islamism made more progress in one hundred years, than Christianity
did in a thousand; that it was embraced by the noble, the great, the
wise, and the learned, almost as soon as it appeared; whereas,
Christianity was skulking and creeping among the mob of the Roman Empire
for some hundred years before it dared to raise its head in public view.
If the Christian should reply to this, by ascribing the success of
Mahometanism to the sword, the Mahometan might reply, with truth, that
it was a vulgar error; for that vastly more nations embraced Islamism
voluntarily, than there were who freely received Christianity; and he
might remind him, how much Christianity owed to the accession of
Constantine; to Charlemagne; and the Teutonic Knights; and bid him
recollect that the monks were assisted by soldiers to convert to
Christianity almost every nation in Modern Europe.--E.

# Compare the above with Maimonides, Hilchot Yessode Hattorah, from
chapter 7.--D.

* The reader is requested by the author to understand, and bear in mind,
that it is not at all intended by any of the observations contained in
this chapter on the histories of the four evangelists, to reflect upon,
or to disparage, the characters of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, under
whose names they go; because he believes, and thinks it is proved in
this chapter, that the real authors of these histories were very
different persons from the Apostles of Jesus; and that, in fact, the
accounts were not written till the middle of the second century, about a
hundred year's after the supposed authors of them were dead. Of course,
none of the observations contained in the chapter relative to these
histories, ware considered, or intended, to apply to any of the twelve
apostles, who were not men who could make such mistakes as will be
pointed out. These mistakes belong entirely to the authors who have
assumed their names.--E.

* That the pretended Gospel of Matthew was not written by Matthew, or by
an, inhabitant of Palestine, may also be inferred, I think, from the
blundering attempts of the author of it to give the meaning of some
expressions uttered by Jesus, and used by the Jews, in the language of
the country, which was the Syro Chaldaic; and which the real Matthew
could hardly be ignorant of. For instance, he says that Golgotha
signifies--"the place of a skull." Matthew xxvii. 33. Now, this is not
true, for Golgotha, or as it should have been written, Golgoltha, does
not signify "the place of a skull," but simply "a skull." The Gospels
according to Mark, and John, are guilty of the same mistake, and thus
betray the same marks of Gentilism. Again, the pretended Matthew says,
that Jesus cried on the cross, "Eli Eli lama, sabackthani," which he
says meant, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew
xxvii. 46.) If the reader will look at what Michaelis, in his
introduction to the New Testament, says upon this subject, he will find
the real Syro Chaldaic expression which must have been used by Jesus, to
be so different from the one given by the supposed Matthew, that he
will, (and the observation is not meant as a disparagement to the real
Matthew, who certainly had no hand in the imposition of the Gospel
covered with his name) I suspect be inclined to believe, that this
pretended Matthew's knowledge of the vulgar language of the Jews, used
in Christ's time, must have been about upon a par with the honest
sailor's knowledge of French; who assured his countrymen, on his return
home, that the French called a horse a shovel and a hat a chopper!--E.

* See Addenda, No. 2.

* The author had prepared, in order to subjoin in this place, an
examination of the Mosaic Code, and a development of its principles,
which he thinks would have satisfied the reader of the truth of what he
has said in the last paragraph. But as it would have too much increased
the bulk of the volume, it has been omitted. It is an institution
however curious enough to be the subject of an interesting discussion,
which he should be happy to see from the hands of one able to do it
justice.--E.

# Mr. English, it will be perceived, differs in his translation of the
Hebrew word 'nebelati,' which is, certainly, in the singular number, and
not plural. The correct rendering is, doubtless, "with my dead body
they," &c.; but this weakens not at all his argument, which is
essentially a Jewish one. See the Commentators, Chizoook Emunah, &c.
&c.--D.

# This was, originally, a note; but, in order not to divert too much the
reader's attention, it has been thought advisable to insert it here.--D.